Tide, a UK financial business platform, is urging the government to implement an anti-fraud levy to combat the growing scam epidemic in Britain, which has resulted in thieves stealing £610 million in the first half of 2022.
The government has been encouraged to implement a new anti-fraud levy to pay and train more police officers to battle the growing fraud epidemic in Britain, according to Tide, a UK financial business platform with more than 500,000 SMEs.
Tide stated that the government’s recently unveiled Fraud Strategy should be “bolder and more ambitious.”
Scams, which have become a big issue for the UK’s economy, saw thieves steal £610 million in the first half of 2022. Tide is advocating for speedier payment processes as well as the implementation of an anti-fraud fee on the value chain, including social media and telecoms providers, where the majority of scams are perpetrated.
A trade organisation for banking and financial services called UK Finance claims that APP (Approved Authorized Payment) fraud is used in the great majority of frauds. Therefore, Tide is pleading with the government to use the tax revenue to pay for UK law enforcement agencies to look into and prosecute scammers, even those who are based abroad, as part of a zero-tolerance policy.
“The target to cut fraud by only 10% by the end of 2024 with another 400 police officers is nowhere near enough to combat the sheer scale of the problem and the damage done,” said Oliver Prill, the CEO of Tide. For this reason, we are requesting a tax to pay for the fight against what has become into a dreadful plague on the UK.
Four ideas are suggested
Tide has outlined four policy recommendations to combat fraud in an open letter, including the implementation of a zero-tolerance approach to law enforcement policy supported by an anti-fraud tax, mandatory data sharing, a reevaluation of the regulations requiring financial institutions to compensate all victims of authorized fraud, and a strategy to give customers more choice regarding the level of fraud protection they desire.
In addition, Tide is pleading with ministers to enact a number of mandates, such as requiring all financial institutions to participate in Confirmation of Payee and requiring social media and telecom businesses to keep records of all of their users and advertisers in order to feed this information into Confirmation of Payee data. Additionally, Tide is advocating that all cases of fraud committed by financial institutions be reported to the authorities and that every fraud be subject to mandatory police inquiry.
“Fraud pays in the UK and is luring fraudsters from all over the world,” Prill continued. Such funds, together with an anti-fraud tax, should be used to invest in fraud prevention and prosecution rather than ensuring returns to fraudsters by obligatory reimbursement. We think that our policy suggestions can help fraud become less prevalent.
